‘Loot’ Squanders the Genius of Maya Rudolph and Its Premise – AppleTV 4 Jailbreak (appletv4jailbreak.com)
The last time Maya Rudolph headlined a TV show—the surreal, bittersweet, underrated Forever—its premise was kept tightly under wraps. Four years later, we can dispense with the spoiler warnings: Forever starred Rudolph and Fred Armisen as a married couple whose stale routine persists into the afterlife. In 2018, the SNL actors alone were relied on to sell the series in the absence of any indications of what Forever would be like or about.
But in 2022, the nature of Rudolph’s new project isn’t just public knowledge; the idea is so compelling it practically commands us to pay attention. Loot has the kind of concept that makes you sit up a bit straighter in your seat: Rudolph, reunited with Forever cocreators Matt Hubbard (30 Rock) and Alan Yang (Master of None), stars as Molly Novak, the longtime spouse of a tech magnate whose divorce leaves her in control of an $87 billion fortune. Lonely and bored, Molly starts meddling in the charitable foundation she didn’t even know was set up in her name, reinventing herself as a philanthropist in the vein of MacKenzie Scott, Melinda Gates, or—ironically, given Loot’s home on Apple TV+—Laurene Powell Jobs. Click!
Over 10 episodes, however, Loot fails to build on its rock-solid foundation. Much like Molly herself, the show doesn’t seem to fully appreciate the wealth of material at its disposal. But while its heroine happened upon her riches, slowly getting used to them like a frog in luxury spa water, Loot built its own sandbox from the ground up. All the more puzzling, then, when the show refuses to play in it.
Inside of Loot,there are several different series that struggle for supremacy, though none emerge as a fully realized vision. One is a sharp satire about the corrosive effects of extreme wealth, which has warped Molly’s perspective and alienated her from her new colleagues, let alone the people they’re trying to help. But Loot takes a too-soft stance on Molly’s fortune, failing to articulate its implications or even its origins. “His shirt was as ugly as his business policies,” scoffs a foundation employee after Molly’s ex-husband John (Adam Scott) gives a televised interview. What business policies, though? And what does it say about Molly that those policies made her obscenely rich? John’s apparent inspirations stand accused of everything from consorting with criminals to immiserating their workers, so there’s plenty to choose from; Loot just declines to do it.
Compare this vague approach to Made for Love, another show about a woman’s abrupt split from an oligarch. The screwy, recently-canceled sci-fi romp created an indelible villain in Byron Gogol, a man whose personal failings are closely linked to his professional success. Byron’s company makes the kind of technology that creates convenience at the expense of privacy and individual expression; he then turns that philosophy on his wife, who he imprisons in a sealed-off fortress and surveils by implanting a chip in her brain. The result works as both…
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2022/6/24/23181693/loot-apple-tv-plus-review-maya-rudolph
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